You Believe Her

by Richard Roberts

  We had reached Claire’s house at last, and Miss Lutra held open her car’s passenger door for me.

  Putting one foot inside, I paused before sliding in the rest of the way to give her a searching look. “What’s the trick?”

  “We sucker someone who does officially know where he is into making introductions. Besides, you’ll love Pong, and she’ll love to meet you.”

  e drove up the winding roads into the hills, where the really rich people live. The roads didn’t just twist because it’s hard to get up a hill. Everyone who could afford to live up here would be simply aghast to have a real street with real traffic going past their mansion. Along one of those bends, we pulled into the driveway of a house that remarkably had neither fence nor gate to protect it.

  Miss Lutra demonstrated the necessity of such things by pointing down the slope and declaring, “Look, that’s Jamil’s house! You would not believe how much money I stole from him during my professional days. The hard part was convincing him to leave it lying around his home in cash.”

  That raised a separate question. These houses could afford to pay for super-powered private security. Was that a thing? And would it count as a hero or a villain?

  Dismissive of any security of any kind, Misty Lutra half-led, half-dragged me to the front door, and gave it a knock.

  An older woman in shorts and a loose sweatshirt (which had to be boiling her in the middle of summer) opened the door. On the short side, pear-shaped, white-haired, she looked classically grandmotherly, rather than a supervillain of any kind. Supervillain she had to be, though. Silver tattoos, like loosely-spaced celtic knotwork or maybe circuitry, covered her legs, the backs of her wrists and hands, and ran up her throat and cheeks. That was all the skin her outfit showed, but no doubt the tattoos went everywhere else.

  I had seen markings like this before. In fact, I’d seen them earlier today, on two bikini-clad werewolves called Rage and Ruin. Ray and Claire called it ‘the Upgrade.’

  Exasperated and a touch sarcastic, the woman said, “Misty, this had better—”

  It took her that long to register me, and particularly my broken-off arm. The tattooed grandma’s mouth formed an ‘o’, and she lunged forward, pushing Miss Lutra aside. “You poor dear. Who did this to you?” Senior Super Citizen asked, sweeping me first into a hug (I was getting a lot of those today), then backing off to grip my chin in one hand and wave the index finger of her other hand in front of my eyes, like a vision test. I put up with it. We’d come here for this lady’s help, and I could use all the hugs I could get right now.

  All elegance and aplomb, Miss Lutra introduced, “Pong, this is… Bad Penny, I suppose, officially. Bad Penny, this is Pong.”

  “Come in, please,” Pong urged me, pulling me into a front room as big as my house, with white walls that caught the sun blazing in from every window. Glancing up past me to Miss Lutra, she added, “And you too, I suppose.” The dismissive contempt in those words was much too affected to be convincing.

  Leaning forward into my peripheral vision, Miss Lutra explained, “Pong is one of the most successful supervillains of all time.”

  The old woman with the funny villain name let out a bark of laughter. “Most successful at holding onto my money, anyway, but that’s not why Misty brought you to me. I’m a widely known sucker for transhumans.”

  Still over my shoulder, Miss Lutra told me, “That’s someone who left their human body behind. It’s taken from the word ‘transhumanism.’“

  Putting on my own ‘jadedly amused’ face, I answered, “Yes, I read science fiction, thanks.” While both of the older women chuckled, I looked around at a second giant room, with huge, comfy pink furniture and wall-sized windows. There’s no privacy like being a mile away from anyone on that side of your house. “This is definitely an expensive place.”

  Straightening up, Pong shouted, “ALABASTER! A broom!” The house tended to a lot of white as it was, but something the color of snow moved in the hall past the kitchen. It threw a plain, non-rich-people broom across the house, which Pong caught in one hand.

  Like a magician reciting their favorite patter, the tattooed villainess said, “There are three ways to retire rich as a supervillain. The first is to make lots of friends on both sides. The second is to move far away, where no regular people knew you personally, and no one with powers knew you professionally. The third…”

  Plucking a straw from the end of the broom, Pong held it out between thumb and forefinger. Pink light flashed, the straw disappeared, and a bang like a gunshot rattled my hollow body.

  “…is for everyone to be afraid of you,” she finished.

  Following the line from her fingers, I saw a little round hole in one of her windows. No cracks, just a neat hole the width of a straw, like the damage you sometimes got in the vortex of a tornado.

  I had to admit, I would not want to fight that. If I absolutely had to, stealth would be critical. Even giving her a chance to aim could be disastrous, and what about the other powers, the ones I knew nothing about? This soft, wrinkle-faced little old lady was one of the powerhouses of Los Angeles, years—probably decades—after retirement.

  The Upgrade might have something to do with that.

  Pulling me over to a worn, pink arm chair, she said, “Have a seat, please, Bad Penny. Relax. You are welcome in my home. How long has it been?”

  “A few hours,” answered Miss Lutra, leaning on the back of the chair as I settled into it. Criminy, this thing was comfortable, like falling into a huge, pink marshmallow.

  “She can answer for herself, Misty. Turning into robot didn’t make her mindless,” Pong scolded.

  Setting my detached arm in my lap, I held up a hand, wagging it from side to side in commitment to not committing. “I can, but she’s also being nice. The day I’ve had is not… easy to talk about.”

  The old woman’s eyes widened, tattoos pulling away from the center of her face. Voice suddenly soft, she said, “Against your will. I’m so sorry. I should have guessed, with the damage. Don’t worry, it will be okay. Misty brought you to me because my son, Emmett, had to be transferred into a robot when he was nine. His power was rotting him from the inside, and it was the only solution we could find before it spread to his brain. I know the transhuman experience as well as anyone flesh and blood can. How are you feeling? Not emotionally, and not the arm. Physically.”

  “Uh…” Truthfully, I’d been so busy with the first two issues, I’d barely paid attention to the robot body itself. I reported the one thing that leaped out at me. “I don’t have phantom limb syndrome, but I’ve got a bad case of phantom entrails syndrome.”

  Pong smiled. “Hold onto that. It’s a good thing. Alabaster! Robot refreshments, please!”

  Something moved into the kitchen, easily visible from here. ‘Something’ was the best I could do. It was a white, more-or-less human silhouette. That was it. The changing shape as it moved around suggested three dimensionality, but all I could see was featureless white, immune to shadow.

  Pong took my staring as a cue to keep talking. “You’re a robot, so this wasn’t a body-switching spell that will wear off in twenty-four hours.”

  “No. I have to take my body back,” I answered.

  She winced. “You’re too young for a feud like this.”

  “It came to me anyway.”

  The white shape, Alabaster, walked silently up to us, setting a silver tray on a coffee table between my chair and the couch. It poured what looked like a cup of tea in a china cup, and set next to the cup a plate of three of the waxiest, flattest, most mass-produced looking chocolate chip cookies I’d ever seen.

  I waved a hand in negation. “I don’t have a stomach.”

  “Try them. Trust me,” Pong urged.

  Well, she did have a robot son, and seemed to know what to do. I picked up the cup, and took a sip.

  TESLA’S TASTE BUDS!

  The flavor hit me so hard, I barely kept hold of the cup. I hadn’t noticed until n
ow that I didn’t have a sense of taste, and my sense of smell was vague, muted, and wrong, like in the middle of a really bad cold. The taste of tea crashed into that emptiness, and I swallowed automatically. That was another thing I couldn’t do, lacking a throat, or even the muscles to fake it, but by reflex I tried, and the liquid disappeared from my mouth. It must have evaporated, but it felt like I had actually swallowed.

  Reeling, suddenly desperately hungry and thirsty, I finished the cup and stuffed a cookie into my mouth. It might taste like a cheap cookie from a grocery store pack, but I could still make out the sugar and butter and chocolate. I chewed awkwardly, because my face might mimic human expressions beautifully, but my jaw didn’t have a full range of emotion. Like the tea, the cookie disappeared into nothingness just in time for me to try to swallow.

  Leaning back into the chair, I panted for breath, hand over my belly. “I can feel it in my stomach.”

  Pong gave me a warm and encouraging smile. “Your mind remembers. It wants to believe, and plays the sensations by habit. Do you know if this body can sleep?”

  Still dizzy from the wonderful, warm feeling of having food inside me, I stammered, “Uh… I’m sure it doesn’t need to.”

  “It doesn’t, but you do. Make sure to keep sleeping. If you have to, have an off button installed and rig it to a timer so you deactivate for eight hours every night. Nothing will help you hold onto your humanity better, and the longer you feel human, the easier it will be to stay sane. Losing that human identity wrecks people.”

  I nodded. “You’ve got that right. The first time I woke up in this body, when I was just a copy and knew it, I… I… Sorry. My memories are… confused.”

  ‘Confused’ did not begin to describe it. I remembered activating the Heart of Steel, watching it go maniacally insane, and having Ray pin it in place until it could be shut off. But I also remembered being pinned by Ray, the giddy laughter of knowing I wasn’t like the flesh and blood people who’d made me.

  For a moment I trembled, trying to put my face in my hands, and only succeeding with one. My gorge rose, and the nausea washed away the confusion, giving me peace again and curing itself. That Penny hadn’t felt human, didn’t believe it was the original. This one did.

  But did that mean I was wrong? I had memories I shouldn’t have.

  No. Heart of Gold transferred me into the Heart of Steel, and that already held a copy of me. We’d merged, since we were the same person anyway. I picked up a few memories, and a sense of self that the copy didn’t have.

  Miss Lutra and Pong were both watching me with evident concern, but I lifted my head and held out a hand to reassure them. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  The old woman regarded me with sober admiration. “You’re a strong girl, Bad Penny. The rumors said so, but I never trust them. You made it through your first identity crisis better than anyone I’ve seen or heard of.”

  “The refreshments helped,” I replied honestly.

  She chuckled. “That’s what they’re for. That, and enjoyment. I’ll see if my provider can handle another customer. If not, you can visit any time for more. You can stay here, if you want.”

  Above me, Miss Lutra propped an elbow on the chair’s back, and her chin on her fist. “I tried, but she’s determined to get started on her quest for revenge.”

  “I would, in her position. So would you,” the tattooed villainess said with a nod.

  “Oh, that reminds me!” announced Miss Lutra. I twisted around to watch as she pulled out a little pink phone, dialed, and after a few seconds spoke into it. “Hi, Lucy! It’s me, Misty.”

  She stopped, evidently cut off, and her smile grew even more sly than usual. “Oh, really? Then I’ll make this quick. The Robot Penny situation has taken a turn for the weird. Can—”

  Another silence, obviously cut off, and Miss Lutra’s eyebrows rose. “But what will Gabriel say?”

  From out of the phone, I could clearly hear Lucyfar yell in a parody of Gabriel’s voice, “I’m not your boyfriend!”

  That got Miss Lutra and Pong both laughing, and I managed a little snicker. Airily, Miss Lutra told Lucyfar, “Fine, fine. But contact me later, before you talk to either Penelope, okay?”

  Lucyfar must have agreed and hung up, because Miss Lutra turned off the phone, and handed it down to me. Smugly maternal, she said, “This is for you, by the way. It’s one of Claire’s old phones. I cleaned its memory and set it up on my phone plan for your robot double, but now you need it.”

  This hadn’t even occurred to me, but it would have, as soon as I was alone again. I used my phone all the time, and the parasite had it.

  The perfect—even at the age of forty—Lutra face pinched in concern, and she added, “But take my very strong advice. Don’t call Claire or Ray until they’re back in town, and you can see them in person. I know you’ll miss them and it seems like giving the other Penny an advantage, but contacting them too soon will make it harder to get them on your side. Take it from an old hand at manipulation.”

  My fist tightened, until I had to force myself to ease off because I might have the strength now to break the phone. She was right, of course. Mom made it clear all the time that painfully counterintuitive techniques like that were the rule rather than the exception in human psychology.

  Sighing, I said, “I’m hoping to have this resolved before they get home anyway.”

  Above me, Miss Lutra said, “Speaking of which, I’m glad Bad Penny has you as a transhuman resource, Pong, but that’s not why I wanted to introduce you.”

  Leaning back on the couch, the senior villainess gave the merely middle-aged villainess a skeptical stare. “This is going to be about money, isn’t it?” She did not actually sound upset.

  “No, it’s about contacts. Bad Penny tends to overdo it on the Tier Three technology, and I was hoping you could put her in touch with someone who could fix that unusual arm of hers.”

  Pong just scowled. Her wrinkled old face was unusually expressive, and as much as she had a glowing smile, her frown radiated distaste. “Ridiculous. I don’t know half as many mad scientists as you know in the biblical sense.”

  Lutras know no shame, of course. Rather than looking embarrassed at the mention of her romantically enthusiastic career, the Minx preened. “You know one that I don’t. Look at the circuitry inside. Doesn’t that remind you of an Upgrade?”

  Pong stared for a while, her expression more troubled than angry. “I got these forty years ago. He could be dead.”

  Feeling like I ought to take more of a hand in my own fate, I said, “Rage and Ruin got their Upgrades four years ago. Whoever does them, he’s still alive. Do you know how I could meet him?”

  The hard, calculating stare of a supervillainess cut the ‘plump grandma’ image as Pong sat, silently considering my argument. Miss Lutra and I let her.

  Finally, the tattooed supercriminal sighed and gave me a nod. “I’ll give you his address. Don’t show it to Misty, and go there alone. Don’t expect him to just let you in, either. He’s as likely to make you pass a test or get past a parade of traps as he is to welcome you. Once you do… well, he has a soft spot for teenagers in trouble, although you may not believe that when you meet him. And you tell no one, ever, who he is or where you met him.”

  I nodded, and jumped to my feet. “Fine by me. If he has a test, I’ll pass it.”

  Her mysterious mad scientist could bring it on. This was my war. It was wonderful to know I wasn’t alone, but I needed to take charge of fighting it.

  iss Lutra pulled up next to the Red Line station. The passenger door flipped open, and I half expected an ejection seat to throw me out of the car, which was totally unfair to Claire’s mom. Instead she leaned over and kissed me right at the top of my bangs, such as they were. “This is as far as I go. Remember, sweetie, I can’t takes sides with one Penny against another, but I’ll give you all the personal support your parents wish they could.”

  I climbed out, and gave the stairway-lined pit
that led down into the subway a resigned stare. “I wish you could support me by driving me the rest of the way. It would save a couple of hours.” Letting out a long sigh that irritated me because these artificial shoulders wouldn’t slump, I added, “But I’m not going to betray Pong’s confidence.”

  She laughed, and gave me a fond, impish smile. It was creepy the way she had all the same mannerisms as her daughter. I had a robot double. Maybe Claire didn’t know who her father was because she literally did not have one? Some kind of clone weirdness? Dimensional crossover? Alien shapeshifter that picked Miss Lutra to copy? Aliens did love Claire.

  Waving to the older of the identical blondes, I descended into the bowels of the Earth, and faced the dread guardian of its hidden ways. Fortunately, along with my teleport bracers, Parasite Penny forgot to take away my Inscrutable Machine credit card. I didn’t know how much was on it, but enough to buy a TAP card and put enough money into it that I could take public transportation for granted until I got my body back.

  I was so getting my body back. What a crazy day, and it was nowhere near over.

  Hmmm. Also, Note to Penny: Go back to the lair and loot it as soon as you have a place to put the stuff.

  Taking the Red Line as a robot was no different from taking it as a human. I spent the time poking at my new phone, which was a bit slow and limited compared to the ones Dad makes, but fine. It had a good map, and that told me to take the Blue Line next, so I climbed up from the deep pits to the light rail stations.

  Nobody noticed or cared about sharing a subway car with a robot, but on the train, three kids a few seats down kept nudging each other and looking at me. Well, ‘kids’. They were older than me physically, but I was feeling mighty mature and weighted with adult issues about now.

  The girl got out her own phone and took a few photos, angling to try and get a shot inside my gaping, hollow shoulder. One of the boys stood up, took a few cautious, halting steps towards me, and asked, “Do you have laser vision?”